Archive for the ‘Mark Wilson’ Category
Alumni Hall – Signage Design and Package Printing
Alumni Hall is a successful retail store with over 14 locations throughout the country, and it’s growing rapidly. Focusing their locations around large Universities, they offer clothing and such for local fans to outfit their families with school pride. With more stores always popping up, they needed to consolidate their displays into a uniform set to be sent to the stores from Corporate for each season. The challenge here is that they need to make sure that the signage doesn’t favor any one school’s colors. Here in Knoxville, the displays will be sitting amid a table stacked high with orange and white, where in Lexington, the store seems more like a sea of blue and white. We were set to task to design signage that effectively relates to each demographic, and yet can be printed in bulk and used throughout each store. Attached here is a small sample of what we’ve come up with. Our Print Services department will then produce these in a manner that will be durable, very classy, and relate Alumni Hall as a large national brand… all at a very competitive price.
Mark Wilson – Hijacking the Spanky Brown Show!
The Spanky Brown show has been hijacked! VPI Business Advisors’ own Mark Wilson has taken control of the microphone for a pirate broadcast on Friday, January 14 from 8:00am until 11:00am. Check out the hilarity on www.knoxivi.com/latitude_35 or click on this link.
Surprise! Postage rates are going up AGAIN!!!!
On Tuesday, July 6, the USPS proposed a $0.02 increase on first class postage to take effect on January 1. Really, Post Office! Are you seriously trying to drive us all to e-mail and make your postage hole even deeper!!! And its not just the price of a stamp going to almost 50-cents, all other services will be increasing also.
What does this mean for companies that utilize direct mail for marketing their products and services? Is the answer to cut the volume of mail, cut staff or just “cut and run!” For most marketers, there are solutions to save production costs, better target your audience, strategies to increase response rates and technologies that can be leveraged to increase revenues. For example, new envelope designs have been created not only for self-mailing but with a “built-in” reply card to reduce production and postage. When was the last time you analyzed your mailing list; who is your audience, why are you mailing them and what are you offering them? Also, are you making it easy and efficient for your customers to respond to your call to action?
Integrated marketing campaigns are the fashionable answer most marketing consultants will offer. The perception by most business owners is “that sounds expensive.” New technologies like variable data printing and personalized URLs require new investment, but the return can be exponentially greater than with traditional direct mail methods. If you are grumbling about the cost of higher returns, can you also scoff at the new strategies for leveraging social media networks? 474,250,920 (as of 7/14/2010) Facebook users across the world beg to differ!
If you are you looking for new ways to address (sorry, pun intended) the future of your direct mail program, give VPI Print Services a call. We can analyze your needs from beginning to end to help you identify cost savings opportunities in printing and mailing as well as look for ways to increase revenues.
Mark Wilson
President, VPI Print Services